New Demo from Husbands, Love Your Wives

The season has finally transitioned into winter, at least in my neck of the woods. It's cloudy and foggy all the time, it's dark when I get out of lab, and I caught myself wearing four sweaters under a jacket last night.

That means that it's high time to bust out the winter artists and albums, which is where a group like Husbands, Love Your Wives come in. Consisting of Jamie Spiess and Scott Reitherman, the tiny, but magical Seattle-based duo just released another demo last week on MySpace.

"Put The Hatchet Down" is a minimalist little folk song that probably wouldn't catch the listener's attention that much if it weren't for Speiss' adorable voice; the way Speiss pips up over the mellow and slightly dreary folk on HLYW's tracks pretty much encapsulates the feeling of a Minnesota winter. Since everything on HLYW MySpace is in demo form, production and mixing are obviously not top priorities. But ultimately, it's a good thing when someone sits down with a guitar and arrives at a sound this nice without any production tricks.

Since Scott Reitherman has already been brought up, we might as well talk about his other band, Throw Me the Statue. TMTS is just coming off of a flurry of activity following the release of their album, Moonbeams. I found out about them when they were opening for Jens Lekman earlier this fall. Moonbeams is out on Baskerville Hill Records and is a phenomenally fun record laden with bouncy pop and burbling synth. Oddly enough, it's definitely a summer record. If I were you, I'd buy a sunlamp to go along with it. As I was picking out mp3s for this post, the juxtaposition of the jangle on most of Moonbeams with the weather outside made me feel like my life is being mocked by the whole damn universe.